The present disclosure relates to an electric smart meter, and more particularly to an electric smart meter enabling a demand response mounted inherently or outside thereof with various lower-level components and capable of performing remote metering services and interactive communications and controls among the various lower-level components.
Although structural changes of power and energy industries for building cost-effective power and energy industry systems through build-up of competitive market systems have domestically settled down, market inherent efficiency has hardly sunk in due to supplier-oriented transaction policy and passive demand control under the hitherto top-to-bottom monopolistic energy supply system.
In one way of effective technical approach to the aforementioned shortcoming, an improvement to the current demand control system may be considered as being plausible, and a measure of utilizing subscribers who are concurrently energy consumers as resources may obtain persuasive power. In order to implement a change of view point from a subscribe load as a consumptive fixed sunk cost to an opportunity cost as active operation resources, a positive subscriber response should be induced, and it is imperative that the positive response reflected on the market should be conveyed to realize an appropriate supply/demand of energy reactive to costs, thereby leading to an effective energy control.
To this end, response information resultant from rightful selection of subscribers as resources should be transmitted to energy producers, and infrastructure build-up capable of reflecting the response information to the market should be a precedent condition, through which effective and competitive market systems can be constructed, nation-wide energy supply/demand problems can be solved and realistic demand control can be made possible.
FIG. 1 is a schematic view illustrating various remote metering and controlling systems according to the related art, where the systems include a low-level component 10, a gateway 30 and a high-level component 50.
The low-level component 10 may include, for example but not limited thereto, an automatic meter reader (AMR) 11, a power meter 12, a power quality (PQ) system 13, a demand controller 14, a heat contact alarm 15, an arc leakage monitor 16, an over power source monitor 17, a facilities controller 18 and a home automation system 19.
The gateway 30 is a wired/wireless network for enabling the low-level component 10 to communicate with the high-level component 50, where the high-level component 50 is an operation system for controlling and monitoring information collected from relevant low-level component 10.
Now, functionality of various systems in the low-level component 10 will be described.
First, the AMR 11 may obtain various energy consumption data (i.e., gas, city water, hot water, heat and electricity) and provide the remotely obtained information to a relevant high-level server 51 via the gateway 30. In other words, the AMR 11 may provide various functions, such as necessary data for real time monitoring, analysis of metered data, monthly reports, daily reports, transitional reports or functions of internet metering, metered information for each household or time and pay referrals.
The power meter 12 may obtain metered data relative to power consumption and provide the data to a relevant high-level server 52 via the gateway 30.
The PQ system 13 may obtain various pieces of power quality information and provide the information to a relevant high-level server 53 via the gateway 30, whereby the high-level server 53 can monitor various power quality, e.g., voltages, phases, active power, reactive power, apparent power, frequencies, power factors, distortion factors, demand, maximum values and the like.
The demand controller 14 may provide a load control function for reducing a peak load in response to control of relevant server 54, so that the controller 14 may possess such functions as control function in response to load characteristics and output methods (e.g., circulation control, priority control, complex control, direct control and remote load control), control function for each season and business, pay system adjustment for each season and business, alarm function, power consumption estimation function, demanded power report function, power consumption patter and peak power transitional analysis.
The heat contact alarm 15 may measure contact temperatures and serve to provide an alarm and a notification to a high-level server 55 via the gateway 30.
The arc leakage monitor 16 may monitor an arc, a spark and electric power leakage and serve to provide an alarm and a notification to a relevant high-level server 55 via the gateway 30.
The over-power source monitor 17 may serve to provide an alarm or a notification to a high-level server 57 via the gateway 30 over-current and over-voltage occurrences on circuits of circuit breakers, switches, bus bars, switchgears and incoming panels, to name a few.
The facilities controller 18 may possess functions of monitoring major facilities in a building or a structure and transmitting the monitored information to a high-level server 58 via the gateway 30. For example, facilities monitoring may include major power facilities monitoring (e.g., a water level monitoring, a water tank level monitoring, an inundation monitoring, an elevator monitoring, a hydrant monitoring and a fire prevention switch monitoring), a profile monitoring during control operation and a trend analysis using database storage.
The home automation system 19 may be composed of a network system for providing conveniences within living quarters and various operation systems, and serve to provide the life convenience, theft prevention services and remote medical treatment services. For example, the home automation system 19 may include a human-machine interface (HMI), a home appliance control, a remote metering, a portable terminal control, a video conference, a parking management, a locker system, a theft prevention system, a door lock, a health care and a janitor room connection.
That is, the conventional demand control or management has been limited to a manager-oriented function in performing remote monitoring relative to power consumption, acquisition of relevant power information according to individual purpose of a product, control in response to a set-up value, an arc monitoring service and a temperature monitoring service, such that there have been difficulties in performing an active demand control due to absence of necessary functions for effective energy management and coping with mercurial market environments resultant from structural changes of electric power industries.
Basic functions to be complemented for the existing technologies and products alike may include from multi-angled views demand response-related functions, functions for providing incentive purposes and functions for combined provision of factors for overcoming various market environments.
Now, shortcomings related to the existing technologies and products will be explained in more detail. That is, it is difficult to reflect a response relative to subscriber selection, to apply various pay systems for incentives to subscribers, and to provide a necessary combined function for obtaining stable receipt of electricity. In addition, there have been no functions in the existing power meters on facilities status monitoring, electric power quality monitoring or demand control management and maximum power control monitoring.
Furthermore, although the demand controller 14 has been incepted distributed for subscribers and load management providers for the purpose of improving load efficiency as a way of demand controls, the demand controller 14 has not attracted a large amount of interests from consumers so far due to limit that it is a supplier-oriented, lopsided public demand control method.
In consideration of large benefits to be awarded for the effective demand control, enhanced positive efforts are required from the government and related providers, and on top of that, a more advanced demand control is required that is capable of eliciting an active participation from consumers, not like the one that is unilateral demand control.
An electronic statement presentment (ESP) system (which replaces the preparation and mailing of paper statements and invoices from a biller with electronic delivery) and electric power sales business project ambitiously promoted by the government based on revitalization of new regeneration and power distribution system are expected to be revitalized, whereby various services and development of systems toward the demand response are expected to increase, and therefore an active preparation thereto is sincerely required in earnest.
There have been marketed products capable of detecting and notifying occurrences of arcs and leakages as electric safety monitoring gadgets, but the products are large-sized and very expensive in consideration of functions to result in difficulty in securing a space for accommodation of the gadget. There is another disadvantage in that no interruption command is given to thereby provide a restricted usage in performing a subsequent action resultant from detection of a danger.
Furthermore, the products need additional purchases for lack of essential functions for monitoring over-voltage, over-current and temperature detection in preparation for fire prevention and electric safety, which makes the products inconvenient in actual application in terms of accommodation space and cost.
There are facilities control systems and building control systems on the market in relation to functionality of facilities management. The facilities control system has a shortcoming in that it is large-sized, very expensive and has a difficulty in interchangeability. The building control systems such as an indoor base station (IBS) and a building and energy management system (BEMS) are installed for the purpose of monitoring an electric system and facilities, a lighting control and a building administration in a building, but the systems are also expensive and require high maintenance expenses, such that a real adoptability of the systems are found to be very low.
Of all things, it is absolutely imperative to obtain lump information through an integrated reliable device under a complex energy operation environment calling for a right opportune judgment by acquiring various pieces of necessary information in a lump. To this end, if the low-level components illustrated in FIG. 1 are to be purchased and installed according to the existing method, a large amount of expenses would have to be footed to purchase products corresponding to the low-level components only, and a large space would be needed for accommodation of the products. Worse yet, there is no way to escape an absurd reality of individual installation of each operational program for individual product operation and lump management, and design and management of additional integrated operational program.